Former nurse's assistant Luis Vega admits stealing from patients at Soliders' Home in Holyoke

File photo by Michael S. Gordon / The RepublicanLuis Vega, of Holyoke, is seen at the time of his arrest last year on charges that he stole from patients at the Soldiers' Home of Holyoke. Here is is escorted out of the facility by a state trooper.

SPRINGFIELD – A former nurse’s assistant at the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke faces a possible state prison term for stealing money from residents for whom he cared.

Luis Vega, of Holyoke, pleaded guilty Monday in Hampden Superior Court to charges he stole from several victims, most of them World War II veterans with Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia, over the course of about seven months in 2009.

Judge Peter A. Velis said the crimes were a great dishonor to people who had fought for their country.

“These people are the reason I am sitting here,” he said of veterans.

Vega admitted he forcibly took wedding rings off the hands of three disabled veterans as they slept or were too weak to resist.

The 35-year-old Vega, who worked at the home as a certified nurse assistant for 10 years, is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday morning by Velis.

The prosecutor in the case, assistant district attorney Matthew D. Thomas, will recommend Vega be sentenced to a four- to six-year state prison term. Defense lawyer Eileen Leahy is asking that Vega receive a suspended sentence to the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow.

Vega pleaded guilty to three counts each of assault and battery on a person over 60 years old or disabled and larceny over $250 from a person over the age of 60 or disabled. The assault and battery counts referred to forcibly taking the rings off the three victims, Thomas said.

He also pleaded guilty to a single count of larceny over $250 by scheme; that charge involved his thefts over time of cash from patients, usually in the amounts of about $20 and totaling over $250, Thomas said.

Two counts of “breaking into a depository,” to which Vega also pleaded guilty, involved two incidents in which he was caught on a surveillance camera using instruments to try to break into a locked valuables drawer of one patient while he slept.

Thomas said the family of one of the victims reported in July 2009 that a wedding ring was no longer on the finger of the 88-year-old man. The ring was not in the room and the man, as a result of his poor health, could not have taken the ring off himself, Thomas said.

Investigators looking into the thefts of money discovered a pattern, which was that most thefts occurred when Vega was on duty, Thomas said.

Police then alerted pawn shops, and, in October, a Chicopee shop, the Money Stop, reported that Vega had pawned three wedding rings there over several months. The last ring was still at the shop, and police tied the initials engraved into it, along with a 1948 wedding date, to a patient whose ring was missing.

That family saw the ring on the patient shortly before he died on Sept. 11, 2009, but when his personal effects were given to them, the ring was gone, according to the prosecutor.